


Here Comes the Sun

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [94]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Childbirth, F/M, Fatherhood, In the back of a government car, Mycroft Feels, any son of Sherlock's is going to mess up your plans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1697441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherrinford Holmes's birth was planned to the last detail. Mycroft should have known that any biological offspring of his wayward little brother would make a mockery of all those plans. Still, it's quite interesting to have a panic attack while Sally is giving birth in the back of the car...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Comes the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maddiestj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maddiestj/gifts).



> The title is from The Beatles, of course. :) this story came as a prompt from Maddiestj, who thought since we'd seen Mary give birth to Violet (and Violet to Hamish) we should see how Ford came into the world.

Ford's conception and birth were planned down to the last detail. The only possible variable had been at the very beginning, when Mycroft hadn't been certain that Sherlock would agree to be the donor.

He had been _almost_ certain of course, or he would never have approached Sherlock in the first place, but even then he had not envisioned the reasons why Sherlock might agree to it. He'd thought initially that Sherlock would simply enjoy having this power over his brother and Sally Donovan, the knowledge that any child they had would be due only to his good graces.

But that hadn't been it at all. Instead, there had indeed been the grace of a gift, and it seemed to be as much to himself as to Mycroft and Sally. It appeared that witnessing John Watson's transition to fatherhood - and being part of that transition himself - had wrought other changes in Sherlock, too odd and alien for Mycroft to easily account for.

Well, except that Mycroft had undergone certain emotional transitions himself. ( _Oh, Bottom, thou art translated_ sprang to mind, though he would never usually have seen himself either as Bottom or Peter Quince.)

But that variable dispatched, and so easily too, everything else had gone to meticulous plan. Obtaining the donor sperm. The fertilisation of the egg. The pregnancy. Like complicated but perfect clockwork.

Mycroft should have known that a child so genetically tied to Sherlock's specific DNA would have sent the whole plan off the rails and into parts unknown.

It was, for instance, spectacularly unhelpful of the child to begin his journey out of the womb two weeks early while his parents were at a Department meeting in the City.

Sally was technically on maternity leave, but obviously the miscreants of the world didn't know that, so she attended regular briefings to offer her valuable viewpoints. She had a knack for seeing connections between big-picture international schemes and manifestations of such plans in smaller scale local crime.

She was in the middle of describing one such link, naming names like Mikos the Oddball and Jimmy Toerag, in some discomfort but no obvious pain, when she gave a sudden yet soft _oh!_ and her waters broke.

Honestly, who knew that a room full of fully trained government agents could prove so utterly useless in so mundane a situation? Women went into labour all the time, Mycroft was given to understand. How did no-one here know the first thing about it, beyond ludicrous cries for hot water and towels learned from inane television shows? No-one knew what to do with either resource in any case.

And what was the point of having all this power at his command if his insistence on an ambulance at once could not be fulfilled due to a tedious combination of traffic snarls, a major accident on the M20 and recent government cutbacks (and mark his words, Mycroft would be doing something about _that_ piece of idiocy at the first opportunity.)

Fortunately, his own car was directly downstairs and his driver was black-cab-trained and knew all the best routes, and in mere minutes, Mycroft had helped Sally into the back of the sedan (and who gave a damn about the effect of birthing fluids on the leather!) and off they went, certain they would arrive at the hospital in good time.

Sally stretched along the spacious seat and puffed out breaths in accordance with their Lamaze classes. Mycroft sent a text message to Sherlock.

When he was done, he found his beloved wife glaring at him.

"I'm in labour and you're on the _phone_?" she scowled.

Mycroft, who was afraid of nothing, slipped his phone quickly into his pocket. "How are you feeling, my dear?"

" _How do you fu....aaah!_ " Any unfortunate response was swallowed by a other wave of contractions.

"This should not be happening so fast," said Mycroft, "you are ahead of schedule."

" _Aaah! Don't blame me! He's the one in a....huuuuuurrryyyy!_ "

Mycroft saw the justice of this, so began instead to puff out steady breaths in an encouraging manner. Sally glared at him, but began puffing as well.

"How long until we reach the hospital, Gunston?" Mycroft called to the driver.

Gunston reluctantly admitted that it was ten minutes on a good day, but the traffic jams responsible for ambulance delays weren't any kinder to government sedans, even those driven by folks who had The Knowledge.

At about this time, two of the coolest-headed people in the United Kingdom started to have both individual and collective panic attacks. Neither of them verbalised the panic, because one was busy trying to breathe properly and not give birth in the back seat of a car, and the other had never had a full on panic attack before and was both experiencing and observing the symptoms in a kind of haze.

The attacks passed, though, because the baby was coming and panic wasn't going to help anyone.

"Mycroft," Sally gasped, "you need to get my knickers off."

"What?"

Apparently, thwarted panic attacks made Mycroft Holmes either deaf or stupid.

"The baby's coming. Knickers off for that, Mycroft. I'm pretty sure."

"No, no, dear. We'll be at the hospital shortly."

"I don't care. I can feel him coming, and I can't reach. Help me get my..."

"Can't you simply...?"

" _Mycroft Holmes, I have never had to work so hard to make you get me out of my knickers!! **Do it now!**_ "

Mycroft, never usually one to shirk from a challenge, responded to his beloved, especially since the command was followed by a sharp cry and more puffing. He scrambled to hike up her skirt and tug down her pants, a feat made more difficult by the fact that both items were damp from the broken waters.

He managed it, though thanks to the roominess of the back seat, and he crouched uncomfortably on the floor of the car, patting her thigh and wondering why he hadn't gone into medicine. He could still do that, of course. Accelerated learning, and he already knew anatomy very well. A little more focused study, an internship, he would certainly be properly qualified to deliver this baby in a year at the outside...

"Oh, god, Mycroft. He's coming. Our baby, oh god..." Sally's panic had turned into plain fear. "Is he all right? Oh, god..." Puffs and pushes, Sally's legs bent up on the seat, and she was sweating and crying. "Mycroft! Is he okay? He's coming and I... Don't let anything happen to him! Don't..." And she sobbed.

The car pulled over and Mycroft did not even look to see where. He flung open the door and threw himself into a better position, so he could see what was happening.

How could this be happening so quickly?! It wasn't like this in the books, or in the statistical studies, or in the educational films he'd watched. It wasn't supposed to be...

But there was the child's head, pushing out, and Sally's skin was tearing, starting to bleed, and Mycroft had never been so terrified or felt so helpless, but he reached for his son, supported his head as it emerged.

"Push, darling," he said, "I have him. Push."

Sally groaned and pushed and cried and pushed and stopped to pant. Mycroft remembered the videos and the photographs and checked. The umbilical cord was correctly placed. No chance of choking. The baby's head and neck were clear, and one of Mycroft's big hands was under the boy, holding him steady. There was blood and birthing fluid and his wife was sobbing.

"Push, Sally, my love, you can. He's coming. He's beautiful."

She grunted and pushed and yelled, and the baby's shoulders appeared, and another push and his tiny chest and belly, and his hands waved, and another push and there were his legs and the cord that linked child to womb... ..and the blood, oh god, what was he supposed to do now?

His hands were full of that tiny baby, squirming and glorious and so vulnerable, and Sally was weeping and bleeding and now what? _Now what? Now..._

Now there were hands in his shoulders, hands joining his under the baby, hands reaching for Sally and opening the opposite door and someone was putting oxygen on Sally's face, and Mycroft, who could speak ten languages, finally understood some of the English he could hear.

"It's all right, sir, you've done very well. We've got them. Everything's all right."

"Here we go, Mr Holmes," said Gunston the driver, "let the doctors look after them now."

So he stood back and with the greatest reluctance allowed the hospital staff to swarm all over the car and his wife and his son and cut the cord and staunch the bleeding and transfer them to a trolley and take them inside, where it was safe and clean and people knew what the hell they were doing...

They'd _better._

*

Mycroft could only assume, later, that either a staff member or Gunston had guided him inside to wait on a chair outside the private room in maternity. It was certainly where he found himself when he heard Sherlock's voice and looked up in a daze some ten or fifteen minutes later.

"You look like a crime scene," were Sherlock's first words.

Mycroft looked down at his tailored suit, now wet and ruined with blood and birth. Then he looked up at his little brother.

"He is so tiny," Mycroft said in a small, shocked, awed voice. "So tiny. Perfect. Beautiful. He fit into my two hands..." And here he held them up, cupped, to show how small, to show how he had held his son, "So fragile and perfect. So beautiful. Like you, when Mummy first brought you home."

And he smiled, tears in his eyes.

And for a brief moment, Sherlock stopped breathing at all.

Then a doctor came out.

"Mr Holmes? Your wife and son are fine. They're ready to see you now."

"That's you," said Sherlock firmly when Mycroft only blinked owlishly. He put a steadying hand on Mycroft's shoulder and helped him up. He peeled the sticky suit coat from him, then propelled him gently in the direction of the room.

Sally smiled at Mycroft as he half stumbled in. They'd stitched her up and cleaned up both her and the baby, who was bundled in soft wrappings and laid beside her.

"Hey Sherrinford," she whispered to the child, "your daddy is here. Your clever daddy who helped you be born."

Mycroft traced trembling fingers down her face, then touched, feather-light, his son's forehead. The baby scrunched up his little face and made a tiny sound.

"Hello Sherrinford," he said, softly, so softly, "hello. Hello."

Sally took Mycroft's hand in hers and kissed his fingers. "Isn't he beautiful?"

"Yes. Oh. Yes. He has your eyes." And he did. Sherrinford had his mother's eyes, and her skin, and a head of dark curls from her and from Sherlock. He had the shape of Sherlock's eyebrows, too, and his mouth. To see so much of Sherlock in their boy was wonderful, and if Mycroft wished to see a little more if himself there too, that didn't diminish the joy of seeing Sherrinford's direct parentage...

"He has your ears," said Sally, gazing at him.

And he _did_. Sherrinford's ears were distinctly Mycroftian, and there Mycroft was, a little in the shape of his son's jaw. He was there, too, along with Sally and Sherlock. He _was_.

"Poor fellow," Mycroft said, his smile a touch wobbly, true.

"I like your ears," said Sally, and kissed his fingers again.

Right then and there, Mycroft swore, he would be a better father than he'd had. He would be a better brother than he'd been. He would be a better husband and better friend. He would be _better._

He would be better at everything, because this woman and this child made him better and made him want to be more than he was. They made him want to be worth them loving him, and to live up to how very much he loved them.

A soft tap on the door brought him back to the world. He bent to kiss Sally, and to press his lips for the first (but, oh, definitely not the last) time to Sherrinford's brow. Then he turned to see the door open a fraction, then a fraction more.

A suit bag was thrust in by Sherlock's unmistakable hand.

Ah. Gunston must have reported events. Anthea would have sent a fresh suit.

Mycroft reached the door in three strides. He took the bag. He opened the door further as Sherlock began to withdraw.

"Sherlock."

"I have to..."

"Come..." Mycroft turned to raise a questioning eyebrow at Sally and his love smiled and nodded. "Come in. You should meet..." _my/your/our son_ \- a whole future revolved around the next word past his lips "...Sherrinford."

Yes. Sherrinford would be himself as well as theirs. But he was also _theirs,_ the _three_ of them.

"Come and meet our son."

Sherlock looked at him with surprise, and even though he tried to hide it (he could never hide much from his big brother), with relief, and a hopeful tenderness Mycroft had never seen before. Because Sherlock could usually read his brother as well, and he had understood how inclusive that _our_ was.

So while Mycroft quietly changed out of his ruined suit and into the clean one, he watched Sherlock stand diffidently ( _diffidently? Sherlock?_ ) by the bed and stare in wonder at the baby.

"Sherrinford," said Sally, and Sherlock started as though he hadn't expected her to speak, "This is your daddy's brother, Sherlock. He's your father too."

Then she nodded assent as Sherlock's fingers hovered hesitantly over the child's tiny fist, just visible above the swaddling.

Sherlock touched a finger to the small hand. He didn't say a word, but he never looked away. He never even blinked.

Sally looked at Sherlock, stern-tender, then, and said "Thank you, Sherlock. Thank you for giving him to us."

Sherlock, eyes still locked unblinkingly on the baby, only nodded a little and in an odd, quiet voice, he said. "You're welcome."

And for a long, long, moment, Mycroft just watched them - his family - his heart full to bursting, perhaps for the first time in his life. 

Instead of overflowing, his heart simply grew larger to accommodate it all.

His family.

_His family._


End file.
